think badly of him. In his present mood instances came but too quickly, and on top of them this culminating proof of his baseness—that he had asked her to marry him when his reasons for such a proposal were selfish and half-hearted.
“You needn’t answer,” he said grimly. “There are reasons enough, I know. But must they kill our friendship, Mary? Let me keep that, at least.”
“Oh,” she thought to herself, with a sudden rush of anguish which threatened disaster to her self-respect, “it has come to this—to this—when I could have given him everything!”
“Yes, we can still be friends,” she said, with what firmness she could muster.
“I shall want your friendship,” he said. He added, “If you find it possible, let me see you as often as you can. The oftener the better. I shall want your help.”
She promised this, and they went on to talk calmly of things that had no reference to their feelings—a talk which, in its constraint, was infinitely sad to both of them.
One more reference was made to the state of things between them late that night, when Elizabeth had gone to her room, and the two young men had stumbled off to bed in such a state of sleep that they hardly felt the floor beneath their feet after a day’s shooting.
Mary drew her chair a little nearer to the fire, for the logs were burning low, and at this time of night it was hardly worth while to replenish them. Ralph was reading, but she had noticed for some time that his eyes instead of following the print were fixed rather above the page with an intensity of gloom that came to weigh upon her mind. She had not weakened in her resolve not to give way, for reflection had only made her more bitterly certain that, if she gave way, it would be to her own wish and not to his. But she had determined that there was no reason why he should suffer if her reticence were
